A noble statement, Peter Beinart to Chemi Shalev in Haaretz a few weeks back (emphasis mine):
“I want people, non-Jewish Americans, to have opinions about this like they have opinions about anything else. They may be wrong, they may be stupid, they may be ignorant. Let them have their opinions. And don’t call them anti-Semites unless they have a history of animus toward the Jewish people.
“The problem is that we have a Jewish organizational world whose business model is anti-Semitism, and there’s not enough of it in the United States. So they have to keep looking for it in the Israel debate, when what’s going on is not anti-Semitism. And it upsets me a great deal that American Jewish leaders never have to pay the price. Nobody ever loses their job for getting up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, reading an op-ed they don’t like, and then saying that that person is an anti-Semite. And you should lose your job for that. There should be consequences for that. The pain of being called an anti-Semite in this post-Holocaust world, when you’re not, is just agonizing to watch, frankly.”
You are so generous Phil to recognize the nobility in Beinart’s spirit as he wrestles with his mixed feelings about Israel and strives valiantly to rehabilitate Zionism, efforts very likely too little too late.
Bravo Phil and Peter Beinart. Beinart makes a VERY important point. He is NOT against (his rather imaginary, or historical goal of) Israel, but he is *DOWN* on the USA’s entrenched “Jewish Orgs”. And, the kicker, his message may be a very good introduction to American Jews ready to begin to learn about Israel as it is today but not yet ready to kick Israel (not ready because they don’t know enough). Making fun of the cheap “anti-semitism” allegation is a good step, bioth for Americans generally adn for Jews.
It’s a good thing for Jews to “model” responsible learning and responsible opinionating. Beinart is on the way.
As to the Jewish politburo’s use of “anti-semitism”:
As Beinart makes “abundantly clear” in his book “The Crisis of Zionism”, the major Jewish orgs used to be (say in the early 1960s and before) HUMAN RIGHTS/CIVIL RIGHTS orgs with a broad focus.
But as Jewish life in the USA got better for Jews, the middle-class Jews who wanted to support civil rights, human rights, began to TRANSFER THEIR $$$ GIVING away from Jewish orgs to broadly American orgs (NAACP, ACLU, etc.).
This process (very sadly) left the Jewish orgs dependent for contributions on people locked in fears for Jews and remembering the long-gone Holocaust as a present danger and THESE ORGS TRANSFERRED their focus to ANTI-SEMITISM (rather than human rights generally) and HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE and Israel adn the asserted dangers to Israel and HYSTERIA generally.
After a giant horselaugh I had to say that within his own standard Beinart is being very consistent and brave here.
The horselaugh however was indeed for the Beinarts of the world—supposedly oh-so-smart— just now starting to find out where that standard leads.
After all it’s the Beinarts of the world—Progressives/the politically correct/whatever—who think that you’re damned right a person should be fired for his or her job for being “anti-semitic” or “racist” or whatever. Hell, when *aren’t* they out on the constant fun hunt for someone’s job?
In essence (and forgetting even their disdain for their supposed love of “tolerance” and “diversity” and all that other self-congratulatory crap they churn out) imposing private speech codes where the government under the First Amendment could not.
So just now they’re finding out how fickle a thing this is gonna be however! Today it’s “You’re fired for being a ‘racist’ as defined by … [faddishness as much as anything else].”
And tomorrow it’ll be … “You’re fired for not being racist [or whatever] *enough*.” Or, more topically … “You’re fired for saying something pro-‘terrorististic’!”
You just have to love the Left, believing that their worldview of things is just always going to rule. Thus, of *course* having society throwing people out of their jobs for having what they regard as unpopular ideas is fine and dandy, because of *course* nobody is ever going to disagree with that opinion much less hold a radically different one.
And yet, over what is a historical blink of the eye term, by their own lights first using the term “negro” was okay but is now probably racist to say, and then “African-American” was okay but now is being looked at squinty-eyed in some quarters, and tomorrow saying “Black” may well be found high indicia of an evil soul.
Go ahead though, you Beinarts, see where the groundbreaking you’ve done like this gets you when your enemies become ascendent and come happily trotting over all that nice ground you’ve broken for them…. See what happens when you presuppose you know the absolute moral truth about things and prefer that over freedom. See what happens to *your* freedom sooner or later to question *other’s* moral truths.
What would be an example having “a history of animus toward the Jewish people”?
In essence (and forgetting even their disdain for their supposed love of “tolerance” and “diversity” and all that other self-congratulatory crap they churn out) imposing private speech codes where the government under the First Amendment could not.
righto, tolerance and diversity has its limitations. so long as everyone is free to choose between coke and pepsi, things will remain calm.
i don’t know if your name means anything about you, sin nombre, but i’m reading roberto bolano’s ‘2666’ and he spins a nice little portrait of western, liberal tolerance that sums up the hypocrisy of the ideal. three academics, two men, one from spain, the other from france, and third a woman from london, are in a london cab being driven by a pakistani. the three of them in the back of the cab are loudly discussing in anatomical detail their plans for a sexual threesome, and this sets the cab driver off on a pejorative-laden rant about the depravity of the west, particularly its women. well, this is just too offensive to the chivalric sensibilities of the men. they have the driver pull over to the curb, where the promptly pull him from the cab, and kick the living shit out of him in a priapic frenzy, complete with erections. after the climax of the beating, they wake from the fantasy fullfilled, and flee the scene before the cops can show up. now that’s tolerance.